"Don't let anybody tell you that the heat-mills of Scharlaff aren't that bad", said the cook, a towering Cielioid Boxer pitted with brown scars, cut into thick green hide from a lifetime of rough living. "I did a couple of Gronnic Cycles there when I was a kid. I did a stupid thing and used the Emperor's Star to rip off some bagwich vendors on Noolak 5. A Spoddle-bug bagwich is a mighty fine thing, but not worth a run-in with the imperial police.
There was an uneasy pause.
"Most folks hear about Scharlaff and think it's a lousy job, which it is, but what they don't realize is that all the wardens and supervisors are doing their level best to make it a real punishment. Any little cruelty they can enact on the inmates, they do that with a vengeance." The pot they were scrubbing hit the back of the sink hard. Two Bravaxians who had been chatting on the other end of the kitchen took the hint and scrambled out the door on stubby legs. They left a baffled-looking, half-eaten Grunkle Fly stranded on the counter where they had been making preparations for some kind of soup.
"Rusty, soot-caked machinery, long obsolete is patched and re-used again and again. Anything that could be automated is done by hand. Burning hot radiation vanes big enough to crush you like a flashlight-bot in a hydraulic press, adjusted by hand." The cook held up a thick arm to reveal a huge scar running from shoulder to elbow.
"Fall protection is strictly optional, and I saw plenty of voggs fall to their deaths down in the furnace room, if they made it that far. One day in that place is one too many."
